It's GOOD

Following three students who attended school abroad, a new book spotlights the lessons the U.S. can learn from other countries. Journalist Amanda Ripley shares their stories in her new book, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way.

This is such a great article. Every school board and education policy maker should have to read it. In particular, after some recent conversations with parents who are choosing high schools for their kids based off the prestige of the sports teams (cos, you know, athletic scholarships for college need to be an option) this blew me away:

"None of these countries takes sports as seriously as the U.S. In fact, they don’t celebrate athletics in school at all. The student who went to Poland was from Pennsylvania, a big high school football state. At his hometown high school, there were three different reporters who covered every football game, and the local paper had an entire section devoted to high school sports. At his school in Poland, there wasn’t even a sports field. When students end up the newspaper in South Korea, it’s because of an academic triumph. There’s a real difference in the message kids about what’s powerful and important. Kids enjoy sports in all of these countries, but they play on their own, particularly in high school. Sports get less time consuming as students get older because the mindset is that they should invest more time in school as a teenager."